Hanging in chains

Hanging

in Chains

*

[

JOSEPH N9DOH0UGH
RARE BOOKS

i ALBANY - N.Y.

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PIRATES CHAINS.

{From the Thames.)

Hanging in Chains

BY

ALBERT HARTSHORNE, F.S.A.

*£*

" No, no ; let them hang, and their names rot, and their
crimes live for ever against them " (Mercy to Great-
heart : The PilgrinCs Progress, Chapter iv.).

THE CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE

MDCCCXCIII

ptREFcACE.

*#

F the twelve regular me-
thods of proceeding in the
courts of criminal jurisdic-
tion in England, the last
— that of execution — is the only one
that is particularly treated of in the
following pages. " Sus. per col." has
been, as it were, the only warrant ; but
in attempting to trace some items in a
record that runs like a scarlet thread
through the long course of events that
constitutes history, it has not been

vi PREFACE.

possible, on the one hand, to avoid
touching upon other modes and details
of capital punishment in England, or,
on the other, to escape from straying
somewhat into the catalogue of what
Blackstone calls " the shocking appa-
ratus of death and punishment " to be
met with in the criminal codes of other
European nations. And while this
course has been pursued, — certainly
rather by way of comment and illustra-
tion, than with any desire to " accumu-
late horrors on horror's head," — an
endeavour has also been made, in
carrying down the pitiful story, to
dissipate some of the clouds of mystery
and fable that have clustered round
the Gibbet. Removed, as we happily
are by time, from a period when it
was lawful, and even accepted as
fitting, that men who bore the brand
of Cain should be made the subject of
a revolting and disgraceful spectacle,

PREFACE. vii

we can approach the matter without
prejudice, and with proper calmness ;
but it is, perhaps, not so easy at once
to realize how great is the change that
has taken place in national feeling and
sympathy since George the Third was
king. And if humanity would recoil
to-day with abhorrence from the ac-
tual gibbet, sensation itself would be
stunned at the punishment for High
Treason, — at the drawing and quarter-
ing of patriots, whose names may
shine in history " through their tears
like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy
stream." It will be borne in mind
that the gallows and the gibbet are
the most ancient instruments of capital
punishment in the world ; as such they
have a distinct archaeological as well
as a legal interest ; and, inasmuch as
it appears that the custom of exposing
human bodies in irons and chains is
almost peculiar to this country, doubt-

viii PREFACE.

less no further motive need be adduced
for now bringing together these scat-
tered English notices. And it is
thought that what may be lacking in
other respects may be somewhat com-
pensated for by the historical and
antiquarian features, so that, in spite
of its rather ominous title, the book
may be found not entirely repellent.

Bradbourne Hall, Ashbourne.
April, 1 891.

sP

TqABLE of co^qte^qts.

Jr

CHAPTER I.

Gibbeting and exposure with the ancient Jews ;
their strong desire for burial, and abhor-
rence at being cast out, — exemplified from
the Scriptures, — David, Jotham, Azariah ;
Jehoiakim. Gibbeting with the Egyp-
tians ; the Chief Baker. The watches of
Rizpah ; the seven crosses. Desire of the
Greeks for interment ; examples from the
Iliad; the ^Eneid. Gibbeting with the
Etruscans, Pliny ; the Cross. Gibbeting
with the Romans ; their dread of exposure,
Ovid ; the Cross, the Gibbet. The Great
Sacrifice. Gibbeting of Saints ... ... I-J2

x TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER II.

PAGE

Gibbeting with the Anglo-Saxons ; Hanging
in Chains. High Treason, — punishment
for, — examples in fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries. Drawing and Quar-
tering. Wallace ; the Despencers ; Hot-
spur. Executions for " the — 45." Gibbet-
ing in Jersey. Gallows and Gibbet, —
difference between, in England ; in
France 13-25

CHAPTER III.

Punishments and gibbeting in Germany ; in
England, in seventeenth century ; in Scot-
land,— Treason and Chains. The Gibbet
in France ; Fourches Patibulaires of
Montfaucon, — La Grande Justice, —
description of ; mode of operation ; allu-
sions to in early poetry ; Gibbet of
Montigny ; Gibbeting of animals ... 26-41

CHAPTER IV.

The Gallows and Gibbet in Spain. Gibbeting

of animals in Holland 42-48

CHAPTER V.

The " Pilgrim's Progress." Entry of Charles V.
into Douai. Punishment of women in
England ; in France. Examples of
Hangings in Chains, 1671—1717 ... 49~59

TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi

CHAPTER VI.

PAGE

Piracy, 1725. Sir Walter Scott. " Standing
Mute." Squeezing the Thumbs. Peine
forte et dure, example of, 1674. The
Rack. Burning alive. High Treason, —
defined. Petition for Hanging in Chains.
Examples of Gibbeting, 1742, 175 1. The
Smugglers ; death from horror of irons.
Witchcraft 60-69

CHAPTER VII.

Gibbeting in Chains first legally recognized,
1752 ; but not part of the sentence.
Roman law concerning Gibbeting. Its
rapid increase in England. Terror at
prospect of Gibbet and Chains. Prepa-
ration and treatment of the body. Effect
of Gibbeting on spectators and traffic.
Hogarth. Thames Pirates gibbeted, —
attraction for holiday-makers. Behaviour
at Northampton 70-77

CHAPTER VIII.

Examples of Hangings in Chains, 1 752-1 777.
Jemmy Dawson. Double Gibbet, — Mr.
Kerrich's sketches. Robbing the mail,
— triple gibbet. Robbing the mail and
gibbeting, 1788 ; Robbing the mail and
murdering the post-boy, and gibbeting.
Double Gibbet, 1796. Robbing the mail
and hanging in irons, 1799 78-86

xii TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PAGE

Bewick's illustrations of the Gibbet ... 87-92

CHAPTER X.

Example of Hanging in Chains, 1800. Tradi-
tion of Hanging alive in Chains, — Holling-
shed, Chettle, — considered, and set aside.
Ambrose Gwinnett, 1709. Hanging,
Boiling, and Quartering 93-101

CHAPTER XI.

Example of Hanging in Chains, 1808. Gibbet
riddle. Spence Broughton. Hanging in
Chains at Malta. A Hand gibbeted.
Supposed Gibbeting alive in Bengal, and
in Jamaica. The Chapter House at Lin-
coln a criminal court, 1827 ; the gibbeting
remitted. Example in 1832 ; severance
of last personal link with the Gibbet (April
14, 1891). Last example of Hanging in
Chains, 1834. Its abolition by Statute.
Gibbet with Wooden Head, in memoriam.
Conclusion. — The Halifax Gibbet ... 102-114

Xlll

LIST OF GIBBETING IRONS AND
CHAINS.

Ashmolean Museum.— Eight separate portions of
Irons found in various parts of Oxford. Some
have cylindrical padlocks attached to them.

Chester Museum. — A leg-piece.

Doddington Hall, Lincoln. — Parts of Tommy
Otter's Irons. See p. 104.

Leicester Gaol. — Cook's Irons. See p. in.

Norwich Gaol. — Watson's Irons. See p. 94.

Norwich Museum. — A Head-piece.

Preston. — Irons.

Rye, Court Hall. — Breeds's Irons. See p. 66.
Illustrated.

Skegness Museum. — Irons.

Warrington Museum. — Miles's Irons. See p. 85.
Illustrated.

Winchester. — I rons.

In the possession of Lady Dorothy Nevill. — A leg-
piece of Carter's Irons. See p. 68.

In the possession of the Rev. J. W. Tottenham. —
Two sets of Pirate's Chains from the Thames.
See p. 75. Illustrated.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

i. Pirate's Chains from the

Thames Frontispiece

2. Decapitation \

3. Impalement > Facing page 2d

4. Burning at the Stake . . . /

5. Gibbet of Montfaucon ... „ 34

6. Breeds's Irons „ 66

7. A Thames Pirate „ 76

8. Gibbet on Brandon Sands „ 82

9. Miles's Irons „ 85

10. Gibbet from Bewick „ 91

11. Iron Cage from Bengal... „ 106

HANGING IN CHAINS.

Cfiaptet i.

O rest at last in the ground,
to be buried in the sepul-
chre of their fathers, was
accounted by the Jews as
the greatest honour and happiness, and
throughout the Old Testament the ex-
pression for death is sleeping, implying
lying tranquil and undisturbed. Thus
David, Azariah, and Jotham " slept with
their fathers, and were buried in the
city of David" — " for so He giveth
His beloved sleep." I

1 Psa. cxxvii. 2.
2

2 HANGING IN CHAINS.

On the other hand, to die an un-
natural or violent death, to be cast
out of the grave like an abominable
branch, to be as a carcass exposed in
the sight of the sun, or trodden under
foot, and not to be joined with their
fathers in burial, was ever esteemed a
note of infamy, and a kind of curse.
1 'And if a man have committed a sin
worthy of death, and he be to be
put to death, and thou hang him on a
tree : his body shall not remain all
night upon the tree, but thou shalt in
any wise bury him that day (for he
that is hanged is accursed of God) ;
that thy land be not defiled." I So
Jehoiakim was threatened with the
want of even ordinary burial, and to
be cast out like carrion into some
remote and sordid place. It was a
severe sentence, " He shall be buried

1 Deut. xxi. 22, 23.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 3

with the burial of an ass, drawn and
cast forth beyond the gates of Jeru-
salem." 1

Again, Jeremiah foretelling the
desolation of the Jews, " Their
carcasses will I give to be meat for
the fowls of the heaven, and for the
beasts of the earth," 2 " and no man
shall fray them away ; " 3 and in
another place we are told that their
bones shall be " spread before the
sun, and the moon, and all the host
of heaven, . . . they shall not be
gathered, nor be buried." 4

In the denunciation of Jehoiakim,
in that picturesque and striking scene,
when the king burnt the roll of
Baruch, it is recorded against him :
" His dead body shall be cast out
in the day to the heat, and in the

1 Jer. xxii. 19. 2 Jer. xix. 7.

3 Peut. xxviii. 26. 4 Jer. viii, 2,

4 HANGING IN CHAINS.

night to the frost." 1 So great,
indeed, was the dread among the
ancient Jews that the dead body
should be treated with derision or
contumely, that the Preacher ex-
pressed and summed up the general
sentiment in these words : " If a man
. . . have no burial, I say that an
untimely birth is better than he." 2

As with the Jews so it was with
the Egyptians. They refused burial
to executed criminals and gave their
bodies to the birds and beasts. For
instance, Joseph said to the chief
baker, " Yet within three days shall
Pharaoh lift up thine head from off
thee, and shall hang thee on a tree ;
and the birds shall eat thy flesh from
off thee." 3 And so it came to pass.

We may gather, again, from the

Jer. xxxvi. 30. 2 Eccles. vi. 3.

3 Gen. xl. 19.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 5

short and touching story of the long
watches of Rizpah, how deep was the
solicitude that the dead should not be
polluted by birds and beasts,1 or from
the ghastly fate of Amasa, whose
mangled corpse was covered with a
cloth by a mere bystander — one of
Joab's men 2 — in order that the people
might not be shocked by looking upon
it — how strong was the feeling in
those days against the wanton expo-
sure of the divine image.

It would be easy to multiply
examples from these sources, but
with further regard to the seven sons
of Saul it may be mentioned that
" the victims were not, as the Autho-
rized Version implies, hung, they
were crucified. The seven crosses
were planted in the rock on the
top of the sacred hill of Gibeah.

1 2 Sam. xxi. io. 2 2 Sam. xx. 12.

6 HANGING IN CHAINS.

. . . The victims were sacrificed
at the beginning of barley harvest,
— the sacred and festal time of the
Passover — and in the full blaze of
the summer sun they hung till the
fall of the periodical rain in October.
. . . She spread on the rocky floor
the thick mourning garment of black
sackcloth, which as a widow she wore,
and crouching there she watched that
neither vulture nor jackal should
molest the bodies." ? Thus the
practice of gibbeting on a cross
was in use at least as early as in
the days of King David.

The misery of having no burial,
of rendering neither justice to the
earth nor mercy to the dead, was
recognized by the refined nature of
the Greeks, and, while they refused
decent sepulture to infamous persons

1 Smith's "Diet, of the Bible," s.v. Rizpah.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 7

and prisoners, they yearned both in

peace and war for quiet burial in the

ground, for they were dismayed at

the thought of burial at sea.1

Thus Mezentius, in the iEneid of

Virgil, asks not ^neas to spare his

life,

" but let my body have

The last retreat of human kind, a grave." 2

1 Of justice, in that earth should be returned
to earth, and dust to dust, for what could be
more just than to restore to mother earth her
children, . . . that she might at last receive
them again into her bosom, and afford them
lodging till the resurrection? The ancients
also thought it an act of mercy to hide the
dead in the earth, that the organs of such
divine souls might not be torn and devoured by
wild beasts, birds, &c. T. Greenhill, "nekpo-
khaeia," p. 33.

2 Dryden's "Translation" — iEneid, lib. ix.
v. 901.

Nullum in coede nefas nee sic ad prcelia veni
Nee tecum meus hsec pepigit mihi fcedera

Lausus
Unum hoc, per, si qua est victis venia hostibus

oro ;

8 HANGING IN CHAINS.

And Turnus —

" Or if thy vowed revenge pursue my death,
Give to my friends my body void of breath."1

And, to take another and a notable
example, Hector, in his last hour,
beseeched Achilles to take the
ransom and suffer not his body to
be devoured by the dogs of the
Greeks, but to let the sons and
daughters of Troy give him burial
rites.2

Corpus humo patiare tegi : scio acerba meorum
Circumstare odia : hunc, oro, defende furorem,
Et me consortem nati concede sepulchro.

1 Dryden's " Translation " — iEneid, lib. xii.

v. 935-

Et me, seu corpus spoliatum lumine mavis,

Redde meis.

2 Tbv d' okiyofipavkiov 7rpo(F£(pr) KopvOaloXog'EicroJp'
Maao/x' virep \pvxyg, icai yovvuiv, aojv re tokijiov,
Mr) pa, 'ia irapa vi]vai Kvvag Karaddipai 'Axaiwv'
'AXXd av p.ev xciXkov re liXig xpvoov re dede^o,
Autpa, rd rot Suhjovgi 7rar>)p ical ttotvui pr']ri]p'
"Zujfxa 8a ditcatf epbv dopevai 7rd\iv, 6(ppa nvpog pe.
TpuJtg icai Tpibiov dXoxoi Xe\a%wai Bavovra.

—Horn. II. xxii. 337-343-

HANGING IN CHAINS. 9

It is said that a certain Achaeus,
who disputed sovereign power with
Antiochus, was betrayed by a Cretan,
his limbs cut off, and his body
wrapped in the skin of an ass, and
exposed on a gibbet.

Pliny, in his " Natural History," l
tells us that Tarquinius Priscus, who
died 578 B.C., ordered the dead bodies
of suicides to be exposed on a cross.
He was a powerful ruler, and an
Etruscan, and made his mark on
Rome. He came from Etruria when
it was in a high state of development,
and, no doubt, the practice of gibbet-
ing on a cross was early in use with
that ancient and gifted race.

The Romans dreaded the public
exposure of their bodies, and ship-
wreck, no less than did the Greeks ;
thus Ovid —

* Lib. 36, cap. 15.

io HANGING IN CHAINS.

" I fear not death, nor value how I die ;
Free me from seas, no matter where I lie.
'Tis somewhat, howsoe'er one's breath depart,
In solid earth to lay one's meaner part ;
'Tis somewhat after death to gain a grave,
And not be food to fish, or sport to every
wave." J

They refused sepulture to suicides,
for they thought it unreasonable that
any hands should bury him whose
own had destroyed himself, and they
withheld decent burial from criminals.
Albertus Leoninus, from the Low
Countries, one of the ablest lawyers
of the sixteenth century, says, speak-
ing of the Romans, " If any one killed
himself his body was cast out upon a

1 Non lethum timeo, genus aut miserable
lethi :
Demite naufragium ; mors mihi munus erit.
Est aliquid fatove suo, ferrore cadentem
In solida moriens, ponere corpus humo :
Est mandata suis aliquid sperare sepulchra,
Et non sequoreis piscibus esse cibum.

HANGING IN CHAINS. ti

dunghill to have common sepulture
with dogs, &c; but, however, it was
more customary to have his goods
confiscated, and his body hung on the
ftircay or gibbet. All such persons as
hung upon this gibbet were, by the
laws, denied sepulture ; and a sentry,
says Petronius, was set to watch them,
lest anybody should come by night
and steal them away." 1 The memor-
able words, "and sitting down they
watched Him there," cannot fail to
occur to the mind.

Our Saviour, with all reverence be
it said, was gibbeted — " nail'd, for our
advantage, on the bitter cross," 2
and it was not until long after that
great Sacrifice — perhaps not until the
fifth century — that the cross became
the generally recognized Christian

1 Lew Leew, " Process. Criminal."

2 King Henry IV.t Act i. sc. i.

12 HANGING IN CHAINS.

sign, and gradually took the place of
the Chi Rho % emblem.

The number of Saints who suffered,
and were exposed upon the cross
or gibbet, is larger than that of
those who died the death in any
other way. Saint Ferreolus, martyred
in 212, is shown in " Die Iconogra-
phie der Heiligen" with a gibbet
proper near him ; Saint Anastatius,
martyred in 628, is represented in a
fresco in the church of SS. Vincent
and Anastatius, in Rome, upon a
gibbet, and pierced with many arrows ;
and the martyr Saint Colman, who
suffered in the year 1012, is shown
in "Das Passional " of 1480 hanging
on a gibbet ; in " Die Attribute der
Heiligen" he stands in the sclavine of
a pilgrim, with a rope in his hand,
indicating the manner of his death.1

1 Husenbeth, "Emblems of Saints," edit.
1882.

Chapter n.

ENCE, as we have seen,
gradually arose, side by-
side with thecapital punish-
ment of hanging on the
gallows in its simplicity — which may
be almost said to be as old as the
world itself — the custom of publicly
exposing human bodies upon gibbets
as warnings to others.

We gather from the " Vocabulary
of Archbishop Alfric," of the tenth
century, and from early illuminated
MSS., that the gallows (galga) was
the usual mode of capital punishment
with the Anglo-Saxons. It can hardly
be doubted that in certain cases, as with

14 HANGING IN CHAINS.

the Romans, the body of the u for-
demed " — in the case of decapitation
the " heafedleas bodi " — remained in
terrorem upon the gibbet, as Robert
of Gloucester, circa 1280, has it,
referring to his own times : —

" In gibet hii were an honge,"

though not necessarily as part of the
sentence, as appears always to have
been the case in England. An
obscure poet, Robert Brunne, has : —

(l First was he drawen for his felonie,
& as a thefe than on galwes hanged hie."

In the numerous enactments con-
cerning the administration of the
criminal law, from the " Statute of
Westminster the First," in 1277, to the
Act of George II. in 1752, no cogniz-
ance is taken of the hanging of bodies
of criminals in chains. Such a treat-
ment of the carcass was, like the rack,
rather an engine of state than of law.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 15

In Chauncy's " History of Hert-
fordshire. " it is stated : — -

" Soon after the King came to
Easthampstead, to recreate himself
with hunting, where he heard that
the bodies which were hanged here
were taken down from the gallowes,
and removed a great way from the
same ; this so incensed the King that
he sent a writ, tested the 3rd of
August, Anno 1381, to the bailiffs of
this borrough, commanding them upon
sight thereof, to cause chains to be
made, and to hang the bodies in
them upon the same gallowes, there to
remain so long as one piece might
stick to another, according to the
judgement ; but the townsmen, not
daring to disobey the King's com-
mand, hanged the dead bodies of
their neighbours again, to their great
shame and reproach, when they could
not get any other for any wages to

1 6 HANGING IN CHAINS.

come near the stinking carcasses, but
they themselves were compelled to
do so vile an office."

This is an early record of a judg-
ment to hang in terrorem, and of
chains for the purpose.1

Gower, a contemporary poet, says : —

11 And so after by the Lawe
He was into the gibbet drawe,
Where he above all other hongeth,
As to a traitor it belongeth."

Again, during the second Northern
Rising, in 1536, the Duke of Norfolk
hung and quartered, as the usual
punishment for high treason, seventy-
four men at Carlisle, but the bodies
of Sir Robert Constable and Ashe
were hung in chains at Hull and York
respectively, as special cases. And
the Duke blames the Earl of Cumber-

1 Chauncy, " History of Hertfordshire," vol.
ii. p. 274.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 17

land for not having hung certain
persons in chains, as he had directed ;
he airily adds, speaking of other
examples in Yorkshire, that "they
all hang still in chains, notwithstand-
ing that I have had no small inter-
cession for many of them." l

We gather from these items that,
although the public exposure of the
body entire formed no legal part of
the punishment for high treason, it
was sometimes added to it for the
increase of the shame. Whether the
ensanguined, quivering quarter of a
man, uplifted high on a gateway, had
a more deterrent effect than a whole
body slowly wasting away in chains,
we are, fortunately, not now called
upon curiously to determine.

It may here be mentioned that the

1 F. A. Gasquet, "Henry VIII. and the

Monasteries," vol. ii. p. 164.

1 8 HANGING IN CHAINS.

punishment for high treason differs in
one important particular from that for
murder. The head must be severed
from the body after the hanging.
The man must be drawn to the
gallows, and may not walk ; he must
be cut down alive ; his entrails taken
out and burnt before his face. Then
the head cut off — " headed," and
finally the body quartered, and the
head and quarters remaining at the
king's disposal. This was the English
law, as finally settled by the Statute
of Treason of 25 Edward III. (135 1).
Such a sentence had been first carried
out, as it appears, upon a pirate named
William Marise, in 1241. Notable
examples are those of Wallace, 1 305 ; l

1 The Chancellor's Roll states that the cost
of Wallace's execution, and transmitting the
quarters to Scotland, was 6 is. iod. " He was
take and broute onto London, hanged, and
drawn, and quartered ; his hed sette on London

HANGING IN CHAINS. 19

the elder and the younger Despencers,
1326 j1 Hotspur, 1403 ;2 and they

brigge ; his body dyvyded in iiij quarteres and
sent to foure tounes in Scotland " (Capgrave's
"Chronicles"). Wallace was hung, cut down
alive, opened, his bowels, &c, burnt, beheaded,
and finally quartered. Newcastle had his brave
right arm, the left went to Berwick, Perth
received the right leg, and Aberdeen the left.
Thus the patriot was broken up.

1 " Enormiter, pertitiose, et crudeliter, sine
judicio et responsione, suspensus, distractus, et
in quatuor partes divisus fuit ; et in nostra
ecclesia diu postea sepultus" (Tewkesbury
Register).

2 The battle of Shrewsbury was fought July
21, 1403, and the four quarters of Hotspur were
divided between London, Shrewsbury, Chester,
and Newcastle. York had the head. Four
months later, namely, November 3rd., a writ was
directed to the mayor and sheriffs of York, as
follows : —

" The King to the Mayor and Sheriffs of the
city of York, greeting. — Whereas of our special
grace we have granted to our Cousin Elizabeth,
who was the wife of Henry de Percy, Chivalier,
the head and quarters of the same Henry to be
buried : We command you that the head afore-

20 HANGING IN CHAINS.

are notable examples of shocking
barbarity ; and not least memorable
though, happily, last, the executions

said, placed by our command upon the gate of
the city aforesaid, you deliver to the same
Elizabeth, to be buried according to our grant
aforesaid. Witness the king at Cirencester, this
3rd day of November."

By writ of Privy Seal : —

"The King to the Mayor and Sheriff of the
town of Newcastle-on-Tyne, greeting. — Whereas
(&c, &c, as above) you deliver to the said
Elizabeth a certain quarter of the said Henry
placed upon the gate " (&c, &c, as above).

Similar writs were directed to the Mayor and
Bailiffs of Chester, and to the authorities at
Shrewsbury for other several quarters of the
same Henry, and to the Abbot of Shrewsbury a
writ was addressed directing him to bury the
body of Hotspur, thus again brought together,
in his church of St. Peter at Shrewsbury. The
fourth quarter, that sent to distant London, does
not appear to have been forthcoming, for reasons
which will be apparent. See Rev. C. H.
Hartshorne's " Feudal and Military Antiquities
of Northumberland and the Scottish Borders,"
p. 296.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 21

after " the — 45," in exact accordance
with the ancient statute of four cen-
turies before. It is recorded that one
of these last victims struggled for a
few moments with William Stout of
Hexham, the fiend who, for twenty
guineas and the clothes, did the bloody
business, when he opened his bosom
and plucked out his heart.1 It is a
dreadful subject, which one almost
shrinks from touching ; but it may be
added that none of the thirty-two
sufferers at Carlisle for "the — 45 "
were hung in chains ; they died the
ferocious death for high treason.2

1 " History of Penrith," 1858, p. 95.

2 The total number arraigned was 382 ; by lot
this was reduced to 127, the total number con-
demned to death being 86. Lords Balmerino
and Kilmarnock were beheaded for " the — 45,"
August 18, 1746. They behaved with much
dignity and fortitude. The former expressed
his wish to Lord Kilmarnock, just before the
execution, that he wished he could suffer for

22 HANGING IN CHAINS.

As a curiously mitigated example
we may mention the case of the five
gentlemen attached to the Duke of
Gloucester, who were arraigned and
condemned for treason in 1447. They
were hung and immediately cut down
alive, stripped naked, their bodies
marked for quartering, and then, no
doubt very much to their surprise,
pardoned.

In Jersey, during the administration
of the Duke of Somerset, uncle of
Edward VI., two pirates were con-
demned and hung in chains, as appears

them both ; noblesse oblige, even on the scaffold.
By their particular request their heads were not
severally held up and exposed by the executioner
with the usual formula — "This is the head of a
traitor." But the sheriffs directed that every-
body on the scaffold should kneel down, so that
the people might see the execution itself per-
formed— a ceremony never practised before.
(" Account of the Behaviour," &c, by T. Forde,
a gentleman then present, 1746.)

HANGING IN CHAINS. 23

from the following extract from the
registers of the island : —

" Placita Catallia cum justicia reallis
ten' die xviij° Mensis Januarii An'o
Domini Mille° quinm° 1° coram Ballj
in p'na Clement Lemp're, Jo'his de
Carteret, Ricardi Dumaresq, Nicoll'
Lemp're, Jo'his Lemp're, Edwardii
Dumaresq, Edwardii de Carteret,
Laurentii Hamptoune, Georgii de
Carteret, Jo'his de Soullemont.

" John Wyte, Bernabe Le Quesne,
Sebastian Alexandre, criminels pour
leur demerites de cas de crime pirates
et larons de mer accordant leur con-
fessions sont condampnes a estre
pendus et estrangles de cy a ce que
mort en ensuyve savoir est ledit John
Wyte sur une potence hault eslevee a
la pointe de devers Ste Katherine et
ledit Bernabey Le Quesne sur une
potence hault elevee p'eillement sur le
bee et pointe de Noirmont aux lieux

24 HANGING IN CHAINS.

les plus eminens desdites Montaignes
et la leurs corps demeurer enchaines
por y estre consumes et pourrys, et le
dit Sebastien est respite par certaines
considerations prises et considerees en
Justice, et tos leurs biens meubles et
heritages confisques en la maison du
Roi ou des Seigneurs aux q'ls il
app'tiennent " (Cour du Catel).1

In Hakluyt's " Voyages " we find
the following : — " Hereupon the
souldiers besought me not to hang
them, but rather let them be shot
throw, and then afterwards, if I
thought good, their bodies might be
hanged upon gibbets along the
haven's mouth." 2

The numerous allusions to gibbets
by Shakespeare show how common
they were in his day.

1 De la Croix, " Jersey, Ses Antiquites, Ses
Institutions, Son Histoire," vol. iii. pp. 342, 343.

2 Hakluyt, " Voyages," vol. iii. p. 336.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 25

It will have been observed in the
foregoing remarks that the words
"gallows" and " gibbet" have been
used indifferently in the quotations
both for hanging a man from, and for
exposing him upon. It would appear
that, at least with us at the present
day, gallows is the thing upon
which men suffer, and gibbet the
object upon which they are set forth.
Hence the expression to gibbet a
man by calling attention publicly to
nefarious deeds, and, as the one thing
has given us the verb, so the other
furnishes the language with an adjec-
tive equally expressive, and a person
by his "gallous" conduct stands a
fair chance of reaching the gallows
at last. A gallows may by particular
use become a gibbet, but not con-
trariwise, and the same remark may
be said to apply to Potence and
Gibbet.

3

Cfmpter in.

HILST such horrors were
going on in England we
may be sure that the
Germans, with their
dogged brutality, were not behind-
hand. With them the bodies of
traitors and highwaymen, as well as
of murderers, were fixed upon poles,
set upon wheels, impaled alive, or hung
upon gibbets. Three prints from "La
Cosmographie Universelle de Mun-
ster," 1552, give some notion of the
sternness of the Teutonic penal code.
The last instance of burning at the

DECAPITATION.

{Facsimile of an original woodcut in " La Cosmografhie
unirerselle de Miinster" 1 552* )

IMPALEMENT.

[Facsimile of an original woodcut in " La Cosmographie
universelle de Miinster" 1552.)]

BURNING AT THE STAKE.

{Facsimile of an original woodcut in " La Cosmographit
universelle de Miinster" 1552.)

HANGING IN CHAINS. 27

stake in Germany occurred at Berlin,
Aug. 18, 1786. It was then seventy
years since a similar punishment had
been carried out in the Prussian
capital. The criminal, stripped to his
shirt, was enclosed in a cage-like frame
which fastened with a door, and was
surrounded with wood and straw.

The last example of breaking on
the wheel was carried out at Vienna
in the above-mentioned year. The
victim was tortured with red-hot
pincers — tenaille — as he walked to the
place of execution.

Weever, writing in 1631, says: —

" Hee that commits treason, is
adjudged by our Lawes, to be hanged,
drawne, and quartered, and his diuided
limbes to be set vpon poles in some
eminent place, within some great
Market-towne, or Citie.

" He that commits that crying
sinne of murther, is vsually hanged

28 HANGING IN CHAINS.

vp in chaines, so to continue vntill
his bodie be consumed, at or near
the place where the fact was perpe-
trated.

" Such as are found guilty of other
criminall causes, as Burglarie, Felonie,
or the like, after a little hanging are
cut downe and indeed buried, but
seldom in Christian mould (as we say)
nor in the sepulchres of their fathers,
except their fathers have their graves
made neare, or vnder the gallowes.

" And we vse to bury such as lay
violent hands vpon themselues, in or
neare to the high wayes, with a stake
thrust through their bodies, to terrifie
all passengers, by that so infamous
and reproachfull a buriall ; not to
make such their finall passage out of
this present world."1

1 Weever, " Ancient Funeral Monuments,"
p. 22, edit. 1631.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 29

It is important to notice, as regards
hanging in chains, that Weever says
" vsually," not " always;" and al-
though in the preceding paragraph,
when speaking of treason, he says the
punishment for it " is adjudged by
our Lawes," he makes no such remark
now, but is significantly silent as to
the legal nature of chains ; but, from
the way Weever puts it, it must have
been a common practice at that time
in England.

In Scotland, Lord Dreghorn, writ-
ing in 1774, says, " The first instance
of hanging in chains is in March,
1637, in the case of Macgregor, for
theft, robbery, and slaughter ; he was
sentenced to be hanged in a chenzie
on the gallowlee till his corpse
rot." *

1 M'Laurin (Lord Dreghorn), "Arguments
and Decisions," &c, Edinburgh, 1774.

30 HANGING IN CHAINS.

In 1688 one Standsfield, found guilty
of treason for cursing his father, and
accession to his father's murder, was
sentenced to be hung at the Mercat
Cross till he was dead, his tongue to
be cut out and burnt upon a scaffold,
his right hand to be cut off and affixed
on the East Port of Haddington, and
his body to be carried — not drawn —
to the gallowlee between Leith and
Edinburgh, " and there to be hanged
in chains, and his name, fame, memory,
and honours to be extinct, and his
arms to be riven forth and delet out
of the books of arms." I Thus the
hanging in chains formed part of the
sentence in Scotland which it never
did in England for any crime, if we
except the solitary instance at East-
hampstead in 1381.2

1 See "Trial of Philip Standsfield," &c,
Edinburgh, 1688. 2 Seep. 15.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 31

We may now pass for a short time
to France. In that country the
gallows was a feudal right which,
held in the first place in capite, could
be sub-infeudated to lesser vassals,
but they could at any time be sup-
pressed by the Crown.1 Voltaire, at
Ferney, had several gallows oxpotences,
and his reassuring speech about them
to his friends was, " I have as many
gallows as would suffice to hang half
the monarchs in Europe, and half the
monarchs in Europe deserve no loftier
position."

Charles V. (1380 — 1422) granted
leave to certain districts to have
gal 1 o ws — -fo urches patibula ires — w i t h
two posts, and a curious question
arose in consequence of the Count
of Rhodez having placed his armorial

1 Viollet le Due, " Dictionnaire raisonne,'
tome v. p. 553, s.v. Fourches patibulaires.

32 HANGING IN CHAINS

bearings upon a gibbet of this kind
against the prerogative of the king ;
it was an abuse of privilege, and
implied the seizing of justice. Such
gibbets, of which the number of pillars,
or, if of wood, posts, varied from two
to eight, according to the quality of
the lord, were used both to hang
criminals from, and for the suspension,
exposure, or gibbeting of the bodies
of men executed elsewhere upon tem-
porary gallows. The sites of these
fourckes patibulaires are recognizable
at the present day by the names,
" La Justice," " La grande Justice,"
titles corresponding to our own more
humble and prosaic terms, " Gibbet
Hill," or " Gibbet Field." The Eng-
lish gibbets have never assumed, like
those in France, any monumental
character.

It is certain that there was already
at the end of the twelfth century a great

HANGING IN CHAINS. 33

monumental gibbet on the eminence
of Montfaucon, between the faubourgs
of St. Martin and the Temple, in
Paris. Sauval gives a remarkable
description of it as at that period,
and, although he does not give his
authorities quite in the way English
antiquaries might wish, there can be
no doubt, from the documents of the
thirteenth century, that the monument
was as Sauval describes it. It under-
went extensive repairs, if not partial
re-building, in 1425, when forty-eight
old beams were replaced by new ones.
It is also recorded that in 1466 " at
the Great Justice of Paris were
attached and nailed fifty-two iron
chains to hang and strangle the
malefactors who have been and shall
be sent here by order of Justice."
Eight great new ladders were subse-
quently added, and all these details
are corroborated by a representation

34 HANGING IN CHAINS.

in an old tapestry at the Hotel de
Ville.i

From these very curious records
the genius of Viollet le Due has pro-
duced an illustration which is here
reproduced. It will speak for itself
better than any description, and it
will be only necessary to say that the
fourth, or open side, allowed access
to the interior by a broad flight of
steps leading to a wide platform on
what may be called the first floor,
running round the three sides of the
interior. Upon this platform the
executioner, with his ladders and
assistants, performed his office.

This arrangement enabled the
designer of the building to form a
vault in the centre, lighted by a
small loop. It had an entrance, or

1 " Comptes et Ordinaires de la preVote de
Paris,"

GIBBET OF MOXTFAUCON.

[From Viollet le Djic, " Dictionnaire raisonne")

HANGING IN CHAINS. 35

" eye," in the crown, at the crossing
of the ribs, through which were swept
from time to time the bones and
fragments that fell from above, the
ossuarhiwiy or charnel-house, being
cleared out, as necessity dictated,
through a doorway level with the out-
side ground on the further or sinister
side of the building. It must have
been a thing quite unique in the
world, somewhat recalling the Towers
of Silence of the Parsees.

The mode of operation was as
follows : —

The executioner, in his rayed and
party-coloured habit of red and yellow,
mounted the ladder, placed opposite a
convenient space, backwards, holding
in his hand the slack ends of three
cords placed round the culprit's neck ;
two of these cords, "les tortouses,"
had slip-knots. The wretch under
treatment was encouraged to follow

36 HANGING IN CHAINS.

"le maistre des haultes ceuvres/'
driven up after him — no doubt with
blows and execrations, according to
the Gallic fashion — and drawn forward
by him by means of the third cord,
" le jet." Arrived at the proper
height, the operator, the mediaeval
" Monsieur de Paris," rapidly attached
the " tortouses " to the gallows, or
chain pendent from it, and, twisting
the "jet" firmly round his arm, by
means of this, and the action of his
knee, threw the culprit off the ladder
into mid-air ; the knots of the " tor-
touses " ran home, and the man was
strangled. The executioner then
gripped the crossbeam, and, placing
his feet in the loop formed by the
bound hands of the patient, by dint
of repeated vigorous shocks terminated
his sufferings.1

1 Lacroix, " Moeurs, Usages, et Costumes au
Moyen Age," &c, "Penalite," p. 455.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 37

It may not be questioned that death
under the circumstances and compli-
cated conditions above described
cannot have been other than a very-
shocking spectacle, and particularly
when it is noticed from the arrange-
ment of the chains that many a male-
factor may in his agony have broken
loose from his bonds, and clutched and
grappled in his last moments with a
decaying carcass at his side.

We can gather a further idea of the
strange and dismal appearance of the
Gibbet of Montfaucon, if we consider
that the quantity of bodies attached
to it, and ceaselessly renewed, at-
tracted thousands of carrion birds to
the spot. But that its hideous aspect
and pestilential surroundings pre-
vented not the establishment, in its
immediate vicinity, of places of
amusement and debauch, one would
almost have been slow to believe were

38 HANGING IN CHAINS.

it not for the testimony of ancient
poetry : —

"Pour passer temps joyeusement,
Raconter vueil une repeue
Qui fut faicte subtillement
Pres Montfaulcon, c'est chose sceiie,

Tant parlerent du bas mestier,
Qui fut conclud, par leur facon,
Qu'ils yroyent, ce soir-la, coucher
Pres le gibet de Montfaulcon,
Et auroyent pour provision,
Ung paste de facon subtile,
Et menroyent, en conclusion,
Avec eulx chascun une fille." *

So wrote Villon — also called Corbeuil,
— in the middle of the fifteenth
century. We shall have occasion,
later on, to show that human nature
on the hill of Montfaucon, in the
darkness of the Middle Ages, was the

1 " La Repeue faicte aupres de Montfaulcon."
Poetry attributed to Villon. Edit. Jannet, p.
292. 1854.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 39

same as human nature in a great
English midland town in the en-
lightened nineteenth century.

Monsieur de Lavillegille tells us
that there was another and a smaller
gibbet, not far from Montfaucon,
called "Legibet de Montigny."1 This
was to supply the place of the great
scarecrow, when the latter was under
repair, because, of course, Justice
never stands still. The bodies of
men decapitated, quartered, torn to
pieces by horses, or boiled, were hung
up in sacks of sackcloth or leather ;
such as committed suicide also,2 and
lay figures of persons condemned in
contumaciam. The corpse of the
great Captain Coligny, who was killed
in the massacre of St. Bartholomew,

1 " Anciens Fourches Patibulaires," p. 38.

2 "Le suicide est une mort furtive et hon-
teuse, c'est un vol fait au genre humain." — J. J.
Rousseau,

40 HANGING IN CHAINS.

August 24, 1572, was hung up by the
heels at the gibbet of Montfaucon.
L'Etoile reports that Catherine de
Medecis — "pour repaitre ses yeux" —
went to view him one evening.

It was the custom in France to try,
condemn, and hang on the gibbet, in
human clothing, certain animals under
special circumstances. So a sow, who
had killed a child, was hung up at
Montigny. A bull was similarly tried
and condemned for killing a man, but
whether the beast was gibbeted is not
recorded. It may be that the diffi-
culty and inconvenience of carrying
the matter out, or perhaps the trouble
to obtain garments large enough,
caused our fantastic neighbours to
draw the line at the bull. But we
may fairly admire the principle of
mediaeval times, which seems to have
been that justice should be meted out
equally both to man and beast. It is

HANGING IN CHAINS. 41

pleasant to know that in many Eng-
lish towns at the present day societies
are active in seeing that not only
simple justice, but, what is much
better for them, mercy also, is dealt
out to the poor dog, the poor horse,
the necessary or unnecessary cat,
and other harmless, helpless creatures.

Cfmpter iv.

N Spain the body remained
usually upon the gallows
after execution, the gal-
lows thus becoming the
gibbet. The following story is an
exemplification of this practice : —

" It was my fortune at St. Domingo
to enter the Town-Church : accom-
panied with two French Puppies,
mindful to shew me a miraculous
matter.

" Where, when come, I espied over
my head, opposite to the great Altar,
two milk-white Hens enravelled in an

HANGING IN CHAINS. 43

Iron Cage, on the inner-side of the
Porches Promontore. And demand-
ing why they were kept ? or what
they signified ? Certain Spaniards
replyed come along with us, and you
shall see the Story ; and being
brought to the {Chord) it was drawn
thereon as followeth. The Father
and the Son, two Bourboneons of
France, going in Pilgrimage to St.
James, it was their lot to Lodg here
in an Inn : Where supper ended, and
reckoning paid, the Host perceiving
their denariate Charge, he entered
their Chamber, when they were
asleep, and in Bed, conveying his
own Purse in the young man's
Budget.

" To-morrow early ; the two inno-
cent Pilgrims, footing the hard
bruising way, were quickly over-hied
by the Justice ; where the Host
making search for his Purse, found it

44 HANGING IN CHAINS.

in the Sons bagg. Whereupon in-
stantly, and in the same place he was
hanged, and left hanging there, seizing
on their money by a Sentential
forfeiture.

" The sorrowful Father (notwith-
standing) continued his Pilgrimage to
Compostella. Where, when come, and
Devotion made, our Lord of Mount
Serata appeared to him saying : Thy
prayers are heard, and thy Groans
have pierced my heart, arise, and
return to Saint Domingo, for thy Son
liveth. And he accordingly returned,
found it so, and the Son-hanged
Monster, after thirty days absence,
spoke thus from the Gallows, Father
go to our Host, and shew him I live,
then speedily return. By which direc-
tion the old man entered the Town,
and finding the Host at Table, in
breaking up of two roasted Pullets,
told him, and said : My son liveth,

HANGING IN CHAINS. 45

come and see. To which the smiling
Host replyd, he is as surely alive on
the Gallows, as these two Pullets be
alive in the Dish. At which Protes-
tation, the two fire-scorched Fowls
leapt out suddenly alive, with Heads,
Wings, Feathers, and Feet, and kek-
ling took flight thrice about the Table.
The which amazing sight, made the
astonished Host to confess his guilti-
ness, and the other relieved from the
Rope, he was hung up in his place,
allotting his house for a Hospitality to
Pilgrims for ever." 1

Having an opportunity we made
inquiries in Holland. In that country
the procedure seems to have been
much the same as in F ranee. Our
very obliging correspondent informs
us : —

" I am convinced that criminals

1 Lithgow's " Nineteen Years' Travels," Lon-
don, 1683.

46 HANGING IN CHAINS.

remained for a long time fastened to
the gallows after the execution. I
have in my possession a copy of an
old judgment, dating 1595, which, in
my opinion, gives full evidence of
what I advance, as this criminal also
remained there a long time after-
wards. It is written in old Dutch,
but let me try to translate it, perhaps
it may interest you : — ' The Sheriffs
of the city of Leyden, — Whereas the
demand and conclusion done and
taken by Lot. E. Huygengael, Mayor
of this city, against and on account of
the dog of Jan Janz van den Poel,
named " Troeveetie," or by any other
name that it might be called, whether
by name or surname, at present being
in prison. Whereas the information
given by M. Eyssler for this purpose,
as well as the prisoner's own confes-
sion, given without torture or rack.
Giving sentence and justice we have

HANGING IN CHAINS. 47

of high authority and on behalf of the
county of Holland and West-Fries-
land, condemned it (the dog), by
these presents, to be brought into the
yard of Graefstyn, in this city, where
criminals are usually punished, and
that it may there, by the execu
tioner, be hung by means of a string
on the gallows, between heaven and
earth, so that death may ensue ;
further, that its dead body be dragged
on a stretcher into the gallows-field,
and that there it be suspended to the
gallows in horrification for all other
dogs, and as an example to every-
body. We further declare all his
assets, if it owns any, to be forfeited
and confiscated in favour of the
county of Holland and West-Fries-
land. Actum in the public court of
Justice — the " Doomstool " — in the
presence of all the Aldermen, May 25,

1595.'

48 HANGING IN CHAINS.

" This dog had bitten J. J. van den
Poel's baby, when playing at his
uncle's house, where the child was
holding in his hand a piece of meat,
which the dog had seized, and so
bitten the child, and thus inflicted a
wound on the two fingers of the right
hand, through the skin to the flesh,
making the blood pour out of the
wound, and causing the child to die
from this world by the terror thus pro-
duced within a few days afterwards." l

1 Communicated by Mr. F. H. M. Van
Lilaar.

Cbapter v.

^:

ROM the stony horrors
of Paris, and the serio-
grotesque doings of the
Batavians, it will be a
relief to turn to the imagery of the
" Inspired Dreamer" : —

" Now I saw in my dream, that
they went on until they were come to
the place that Simple, and Sloth, and
Presumption, lay and slept in, when
Christian went by on pilgrimage : and
behold they were hanged up in irons,
a little way off on the other side."
This was written between 1660 and
4

5o HANGING IN CHAINS.

1670. It is to be observed that the
expression is " irons," and not chains,
and that the fact is mentioned in a
simple, natural way, as if the mode of
punishment was quite usual for grave
offences. Christiana says — " They
should never be bewailed by me ;
they have but what they deserve :
and I think it well that they stand so
near the highway, that others may
see and take warning." And she
suggests that their crimes should be
engraved on an iron or brass plate,
and left "for a caution to other bad
men/' which Greatheart told her had
already been done. But Mercy, with
a lack of tenderness which her name
and fine earnest character do not
bespeak, cries out, V No, no, let them
hang, and their names rot, and their
crimes live for ever against them ! "

The crimes in question were
combination against the truth, and

HANGING IN CHAINS. 51

opposition unto holiness, figuratively
deserving the highest punishment
that could be awarded.

In that strange, shameful, and
scarce book, " Le Moyen de Par-
venir," by Beroalde de Verville, it is
recorded that when Charles V. made
his entry into Douai, the inhabitants
set up triumphal arches and like
embellishments. At the last moment
they bethought themselves of a
wretch who was gibbeted hard by
the gate of the principal entrance.
Him they therefore dressed in a clean
white shirt, to do honour to the
emperor.1 It will be noticed that

1 "Quand l'Empereur Charles y fit son
entree ; les gens de cette ville-la lui voulurent
faire tout l'honneur qu'ils purent. Et faisant
de belle facons d'arcades, chapeaux de triom-
phes, poiteaux et telles magnificences, ils
s'aviserent d'un pendu qui etait a la porte de
la ville et principale entree. Ils oterent a ce
pendu sa chemise sale, et lui en mirent une

52 HANGING IN CHAINS.

they did not take the body away,
which would have been easier ; that
would have been illegal.

Before proceeding further it must
be stated, as it were to clear the
ground, that there were certain
treasonable offences for which women
might be convicted, and it is to the
credit of the English law that the
solemn and terrible sentence was not
carried out upon them in its fulness,
so that, both for high treason and
petit treason, the sentence ordered
merely drawing to the gallows and
burning alive. This sentence was
modified in 30 George III. (1 791)
to drawing, hanging, and dissecting.
It is similarly to the credit of

blanche pour faire honneur a Monsieur
l'Empereur " (Le Moyen de Parvenir : con-
tenant la raison de tout ce qui a et£, est et
sera. Nulle Part., 1000700504, vol. ii.
p. 249).

HANGING IN CHAINS. 53

humanity that the bodies of women
were not publicly exposed on gibbets
in irons and chains.

In France the same feelings of
respect and propriety prevented the
hanging of women at the " fourches
patibulaires." The sentence for
grave offences was that of "la
fosse," or burying alive, usually in
front of the gibbet.

It will be convenient now to give a
variety of examples further illustrating
the subject specially under our notice.

We learn from the parish registers
of Bourne, in Cambridgeshire, that
Richard Foster, his wife, and his child,
were buried on Shrove Wednesday,
1 67 1. All three were murdered on
the preceding Sunday by a miscreant
named George Atkins. He evaded
the law for seven years, but was
finally captured, hung, and gibbeted on
Caxton Common, adjoining Bourne.

54 HANGING IN CHAINS.

In 1674 Thomas Jackson, a noto-
rious highwayman, was executed for
the murder of Henry Miller. He
was hung in chains on a gibbet set
up between two elm trees on
Hampstead Heath, one of which
still remains, known as " Gallows
Tree." Jackson left a " Recantation,"
which was printed in quarto form
immediately after his death. In this
rare tract "is truly discovered the
whole mystery of that Wicked and
Fatal Profession of Padding in the
Road."

In 1687 a person named Bunbury
was barbarously murdered by one
Loseby, who was caught almost red-
handed, executed, and hung in chains
on the top of a tumulus on the
Watling Street Road, about four
miles from Rugby. The spot is
marked in Beighton's map of War-
wickshire, from a survey made in 1725,

HANGING IN CHAINS. 55

as " Loseby's Gibbet." The tumulus
was demolished — as so many others
unfortunately have been — in the
latter part of the last century, on
the making of a turnpike road
between Daintry and Lutterworth.1
In modern maps the site of the
tumulus is forgotten, and the spot
being now known as " Gibbet Hill,"
the ancient history is wiped out, or,
perhaps, to put it more justly, one
kind of history replaces another, as
it ever has done, in the revolutions
of time, and an entirely new train
of thoughts is called up.

In 1690 one William Barwick,
while out walking with his wife at
Cawood, a few miles south of York,
threw her into a pond, drowned her,
drew her out, and buried her
then and there, in her clothes.

1 Information from the late Mr. M. H. Bloxam.

56 HANGING IN CHAINS.

Barwick's brother-in-law's suspicions
arose, and inquiries were set about ;
the man confessed, and was duly
tried, condemned, and executed at
York, and hung in chains by the side
of the fatal pond. The curious part
of this case was that Barwick's
brother-in-law was urged to move
in the matter in consequence of his
having seen, or fancied he saw — it
was all the same in, and long after,
the time of Matthew Hopkins1 —
a few days after the murder, the
ghost of his sister, by the side of
the water, at twelve o'clock in the
daytime! And his deposition to
that effect was taken before the Lord

1 Witch-Finder General, under a commission
from Parliament in the reign of Charles I.
He hung threescore suspected witches in one
year in Suffolk under most wicked and
degrading circumstances.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 57

Mayor on the day preceding the
trial.1

Probably if Barwick had not con-
fessed, his case, in those times,
against such evidence as this, would
have been quite hopeless.

When the convicted man mounted
the gallows he naively told the hang-
man that he hoped the rope was
strong enough, because, he said, if
it broke with his weight, he would
fall to the ground, and become a
cripple for life. His apprehensions
were quieted by the hangman's assur-
ance that he might venture upon the
rope with perfect confidence. And
so it turned out, for it was, as
American speculators would say, a
" spot " transaction.

For examples in the early years of

1 Rev. S. Baring-Gould, " Yorkshire Oddities,"
vol. i. p. 56.

58 HANGING IN CHAINS.

the eighteenth century, the following
will suffice ; they show how thick
the gibbets were near London.

Edward Tooll, executed on Finch-
ley Common, Feb., 1700, and after-
wards hung in chains. — Michael Von
Berghem, and another, executed at
the Hartshorne Brewery, June, 1700,
and hung in chains, between Mile
End and Bow. — William Elby, ex-
ecuted at Fulham, in the town,
Aug., 1707, and hung in chains there.
—Hermann Brian, executed in St.
James's Street, near St. James's
House, Oct., 1707, and hung in chains
at Acton Gravel Pits. — Richard Keele,
and William Lowther, executed on
Clerkenwell Green, 1 713, conveyed
to Holloway, and there hung in
chains. — John Tomkins, executed at
Tyburn, Feb., 171 7, with fourteen
other malefactors, and hung in chains.
— Joseph Still, executed on Stamford

HANGING IN CHAINS. 59

Hill Road, and hung in chains in
the Kingsland Road. — John Price,
executed in Bunhill Fields, and hung
in chains near Hollo way, 171 7.1

1 "Notes and Queries," 1874, vol. i. p. 35.
Fifth Series.

Chapter vi.

T will be recollected that
one of the most interest-
ing of Sir Walter Scott's
novels, " The Pirate," is
founded upon a case of piracy in the
Orkneys, in 1725.1 The captain, John
Gow, and his crew, were secured, with
much courage and address, by a pa-
triotic inhabitant, James Fea, and the

1 It may be recalled that Defoe published,
anonymously, in 1725, a most interesting and
vivid account of the conduct, proceedings, and
capture of the pirate Gow and his buccaneer
crew.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 61

prisoners were prosecuted by the High
Court of Admiralty. The remarkable
part of this affair was that, on Gow
" standing mute," that is, refusing to
plead, the judge ordered that he should
be brought to the bar and his thumbs
squeezed by two men with a whipcord
until it broke ; that it should be
doubled, and then trebled, and that the
operators should pull with their whole
strength. This discipline Gow endured
with much fortitude, but when he had
seen the preparations for pressing
him to death — the peine forte et dure,
— until he died, or pleaded, his cour-
age gave way, — few men, especially
bad ones, can look unflinchingly into
the dark valley, — and he said he would
not have given so much trouble if he
could have been assured of not being
hung in chains. He was convicted,
hung, and gibbeted in the chains he so
much dreaded.

62 HANGING IN CHAINS.

Apropos of the peine forte et dure,
in March, 1674, a man living at Can-
nock was arraigned at the Stafford
Assizes for the murder of his father,
mother, and wife. He refused to plead,
but was adjudged guilty. For his con-
tumacy he was sentenced to undergo
the peine forte et dure, or ■, in other words
to be pressed to death. This was
carried out, as appears from a picture
in the Salt Library at Stafford, show-
ing the unhappy wretch lying on the
floor, with a board on his chest covered
with a number of heavy weights.1

This must have been a more dread-
ful agony, while it lasted, than the
"little ease" or the "rack." The
severity of the latter engine is suffi-
ciently attested by the signatures of

1 J. L. Cherry, " Stafford " in Olden Times,
p. 80.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 63

Guy Fawkes before and after that
ordeal.1

In 1726 Mrs. Catherine Hayes was
burnt alive, doubtless for high or petit
treason.2

1 "Mute
The camel labours with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed
In vain should such examples be : if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we, of nobler clay,
May temper it to bear."

" Childe Harold," iv. 21.
2 High Treason, as denned by the Statute of
25 Edward III. (1351), is divided by Blackstone
into seven distinct branches. The first is " com-
passing or imagining the death of the King, the
Queen, or their eldest son and heir." 2. " Vio-
lating the King's companion, or the King's
eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the
King's eldest son and heir." 3. " Levying war
against the King in his realm." 4. "Adhering
to the King's enemies in his realm, or elsewhere."
5. "Counterfeiting the King's great or privy
seal." 6. "Counterfeiting the King's money."
7. " Slaying the chancellor, treasurer, or any of
the King's justices, being in their places, doing

64 HANGING IN CHAINS.

We gather from Howell's State
Trials that when the English Regency-
made an order, in 1742, to hang the
body of the murderer of Mr. Penny
in chains, they inserted therein that
it was on the petition of the relatives
of the deceased.1

In 1742 John Breeds a butcher of
Rye, conceived a violent animosity
against Mr. Thomas Lamb of the
same place, and, as the old Statute of
High Treason would put it, " com-
passed and imagined " his death. The

their offices." (Blackstone's, Comm. vol. iv. p.

76).

Petit Treason is aggravated murder, according
to the same Statute ; and may happen in three
ways : 1. " By a servant killing his master." 2.
"By a wife killing her husband." 3. "By an
ecclesiastic killing his superior." (Blackstone, ib,
p. 202).

1 A Regency of Lords Justices administered
the government during the numerous absences
of the King in Hanover,

HANGING IN CHAINS. 65

opportunity seemed to present itself
on the night of March 17th, on the
occasion of Mr. Lamb being about to
see a friend off by ship to France.
But, changing his mind at the last
moment, he requested his neighbour,
Mr. Grebble, to take his place, which
he did. Breeds, or, as he is called on
Mr. Grebble' s tombstone, the " san-
guinary butcher," sharpened his knife
and took his station in the shadowy
churchyard, and soon rushed on the
unsuspecting Mr. Grebble, and mor-
tally stabbed him. The unfortunate
victim had strength enough to reach
his house, and sit himself in a chair,
out of which he very soon fell, and died,
to the great consternation of his ser-
vant, who was at once suspected of
being the murderer. The conduct of
Breeds, however, soon cleared up all
doubts upon this point. He was tried,
and found guilty, and condemned to

66 HANGING IN CHAINS.

death, and to be hung in chains. For
this purpose a gibbet was set up in a
marsh at the west end of the town
now called " Gibbet Marsh." The
carcass of Breeds swung for many-
years on the morass, and when all
but the upper part of the skull had
dropped away, the chains and frame
were rescued by the Corporation of
Rye, and have, by lapse of time,
acquired a kind of grim interest, if not
exactly to " adorn a tale," at least
"to point a moral."

In 1747 Christopher Holliday was
beaten to death with his own staff by
a cold-blooded savage, Adam Graham,
on Beck Moor, near Balenbush, on
the English side of the Border. Gra-
ham was executed at Carlisle, and his
body hung in chains upon a gibbet
twelve yards high, on Kingmoor, with
twelve thousand nails driven into it
to prevent it being swarmed, or cut

BREEDS'S IRONS, 1742.

{From a photograph. )

HANGING IN CHAINS. 67

down, and the body carried off. The
murderer left a confession of several
other crimes, which was published at
the time in pamphlet form, and had a
large sale.

The smugglers also fell into the
dire clutches of the law for the good
reason that their vulgar atrocities de-
served the highest punishment. They
were not graceful villains like Claud
Duval, that hero of the mob, who is
said — but by disinterested witnesses—
to have quite charmed the victims
while he broke two of the command-
ments. Thus William Carter, smug-
gler and murderer, was executed and
hung up in chains near Rake, on the
Portsmouth road, in 1749.1 Four
others, concerned in the same crime,
were similarly gibbeted. One of the

1 "Sussex Archaeological Collections," vol.
xxiii. p. 215.

68 HANGING IN CHAINS.

leg pieces of Carter's irons is in the
collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill.
Implicated in this affair — namely,
the robbery of the Custom House at
Poole, and the murder of Mr. Galley
and Mr. Chater — was William Jack-
son. He, also, was condemned to be
hung, and gibbeted in chains ; but the
poor wretch was so ill, and horror-
struck when they measured him for
his irons, that he died of fright. His
body was thrown into a hole near
Carter's gibbet. A memorial stone,
with a long inscription recording the
crime in which so many suffered, was
set up on the spot in 1749, and still
remains.

Under the pressure of a belief in
the extraordinary delusion of witch-
craft, a harmless and aged couple at
Tring, — who had been removed from
the workhouse to the church for safety,
— were seized and so shockingly

HANGING IN CHAINS. 69

handled and ducked by a mob at Long
Marston, near Tring, in 1751, that the
woman, Ruth Osborne, died on the
spot. The ringleader, Thomas Colley,
was tried at Hertford, when the re-
volting particulars of the barbarities
were proved. He was taken for
execution to Gubblecote Cross, in
Long Marston parish, thirty miles from
Hertford, and so great was the in-
fatuation, and sympathy for the man
who had "destroyed an old wicked
woman that had done so much mis-
chief by her witchcraft," that a strong
escort of horse was necessary. The
body of Colley was afterwards hung
in chains on the same gallows, the
people of Long Marston, many of
whom were present at the murder,
having petitioned against the gibbet-
ing near their houses.1

* "Gentleman's Magazine," 1751, p. 186.

Chapter vn.

Y this time, as we have
seen, it had gradually be-
come usual for the court,
in atrocious cases, to direct
that the murderer's body should be
hung upon a gibbet in chains, near
the place where the fact was com-
mitted ; but this was no part of the
legal judgment.1 By an Act of 25
George IL (1752) gibbeting in chains
was first legally recognized. By this
statute it was enacted that the body

1 Blackstone, " Comra." vol. iv. p. 202,

HANGING IN CHAINS. 71

should, after sentence delivered and
execution done, be given to the sur-
geons to be dissected and anatomized,
and that the judge may direct the
body to be afterwards hung in chains,
but in no wise to be buried without
dissection.1

But still the gibbeting did not
form, as it never has formed, part
of the legal sentence.2 The judge
could direct it to be carried out by a
special order to the sheriff^ and this
was sometimes done — as we have
seen in the case of Mr. Penny's
murder in 1741 — on the petition of
the relatives of the deceased. The
theory was that the body was at the
disposal of the Crown, and that an
order to hang in chains would be
granted on application to the proper

1 Blackstone, " Comm." vol. iv. p. 202.

2 Do. do. ib.

3 Do. do. ib.

72 HANGING IN CHAINS.

authorities. This post-mortem revenge-
ment was thought to be a singular
great comfort to the relatives of the
murdered man. The Roman law also
permitted the murderer's body to re-
main on the gibbet after execution,
as a comfortable sight to the relatives
of the deceased : — "Famosos latrones,
in his locis, ubi graffati sunt, furca
figendos placuit : ut et conspictu de-
terreantur alii, et solatio sit cognatis
interemptorum." l

The Act of 1752 seems to have
cleared the way considerably, and
from this date gibbetings rapidly in-
creased. It may here be recalled
that the idea of being gibbeted was
ever a very terrifying one to the
sufferer, and many a strong man who
had stood fearless under the dread
sentence broke down when he was

» Ff. 48, 19, 28, § 15.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 73

measured .for his irons. We may
inquire a little what was in prospect
for the caitiff that made the iron so
to enter into his soul.

At Newgate, which no doubt gave
the example to other prisons, it was
the custom, after execution, to con-
vey the body into a place grimly
called " the Kitchen." Here stood
a caldron of boiling pitch, and into
this the carcass was thrown. It was
shortly after withdrawn, placed in the
chains, and these cold-rivetted — truly
enough " fast bound in misery and
iron." We can picture the brutal
work, with, no doubt, the coarse jest-
ing, when the dead malefactor was
finally rivetted up in what was called
"his last suit."

" 'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange ;
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful." I

1 Othello ', Act i. sc. 3.
5

74 HANGING IN CHAINS.

Occasionally the bodies were put into
sacks, and so hung up. In France
also, men in the fifteenth century
were drowned in sacks of leather ;
hence the term " gens de sac et de
corde " for evilly-disposed persons at
the present day.

It is well known — for there is fre-
quent allusion to it in the literature
of the time — that travellers approach-
ing London and other large cities, in
the last century, were offended, both
in sight and in other ways, by the
number of dingy, dead, iron-bound
bodies that welcomed them. In re-
mote parts a gibbet had the effect
of diverting the slender traffic — at
least when night set in. Belated
wayfarers were grieved by the horrid
grating sound as the body in the iron
frame swung creaking to and fro.
Thus Shakespeare :—

HANGING IN CHAINS. 75

" Against the senseless winds shall grin in vain,
Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again." l

And in the daytime these odd features
in an English landscape often proved
an attraction to flippant sporting men.
On the banks of the Thames, op-
posite Blackwall, hung the bodies of
numerous pirates. The Rev. T.
Mozeley, in his " Reminiscences,"
tells us that " the only inhabitants
of the Isle of Dogs that I ever saw
were three murderers hanging from
a gibbet." A correspondent tells us
" they looked like scarecrows." One
of Hogarth's pictures of " The Idle
Apprentice" series shows the pirates
hanging in the distance.2 In later
times, in the windows of the water-
side taverns at Blackwall, " spy-

1 King Henry VI, Part ii. Act iv. sc. 1.

2 Two sets of pirates' chains from the Thames
are in the collection of the Rev. J. W. Totten-
ham.

76 HANGING IN CHAINS.

glasses," or what Robinson Crusoe
called " perspective glasses/' were
fixed for people to enjoy the spec-
tacle ; similarly the Greenwich pen-
sioners on the Hill used to exhibit
the gibbeted pirates on the opposite
side of the river, in the Isle of Dogs,
through telescopes ; and when the
bodies were removed by legislative
enactment, some of the forward news-
papers of the day made an outcry
that the holiday-makers were deprived
of their amusements.1

In the same manner, at Northamp-
ton, on the occasion of the last public
execution there, in 1852, thousands of
people gathered together, and were
painfully disappointed and turbulent
when they found the day had been
changed. Some of these worthies

1 "Notes and Queries," 1874, vol. i. p. 35.
Fifth Series.

A THAMES PIRATE

HANGING IN CHAINS. 77

said if they could only get at the
under-sheriff " they would let him
know what it was to keep honest folk
in suspense," one old woman loudly
declaring- that she should claim her
expenses from the authorities.1 The
New Drop set up at the Northamp-
ton County Gaol in 18 18 was of such
ample capacity that it was proudly
described by the governor as efficient
for the hanging of twelve persons
" comfortably." 2

1 C. A. Markham, " Ancient Punishments in
Northamptonshire," p. 16. 2 Ibid.

V

CJmptet viii.

N 1752 Captain Lo wry-
suffered at Execution
Dock, and was hung in
chains by the side of
the Thames, doubtless for piracy ;
and in the same year John Swan
was executed at Chelmsford and hung
in chains in Epping Forest.

In 1764 William Corbett was exe-
cuted on Kennington Common. His
body was ic fixed in irons " — a new
expression — and hung upon Gallery
Wall, between Rotherhithe and Dept-
ford. Eighteen years earlier the gal-

HANGING IN CHAINS. 79

lant young rebel, Jemmy Dawson,
had been hung, drawn, and quartered
on the same common for " the -45."
A young lady — " dear Kitty, peerless
maid ! " — died of a broken heart on
the day of his execution.

" She followed him, prepared to view
The terrible behests of law ;
And the last scene of Jemmy's woes
With calm and stedfast eye she saw." *

On November 16, 1766, Thomas
Parker called on his way from Pen-
rith Market at a small inn at Carlton.
Being somewhat the worse for drink,2

1 Percy. " Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry," vol. i. p. 306.
2 "Ale makes many a man reel over the fallows;

Ale makes many a man to swear by God and
All-Hallows ;

Ale makes many a man to hang upon the

gallows —

With dole."

"Songs and Carols." Edited by Thomas

Wright. Percy Society, 1847.

80 HANGING IN CHAINS.

the landlord urged him to remain, but
the shaggy sot pressed on his way,
and was murdered the same night.
The affair caused an extraordinary
local interest among a population who
had not forgotten the shocking inci-
dents of the punishments for the
Rebellion of twenty years before.
The poor muddled man had been
beaten to death by one Thomas
Nicholson, after a violent struggle
with the assassin. The murderer,
upon strong circumstantial evidence,
was sentenced to be executed, and
his body to be hung in chains near
where the crime was committed. It
so hung for many years, slowly drop-
ping to pieces, until on one stormy
night the gibbet was blown down.
Shortly after some humane persons
from Edenhall came and gathered
the desolate bones together, wrapped
them in a winnowin^-sheet — it sounds

HANGING IN CHAINS. 81

like an episode from the Apocry-
pha, like a good deed of Tobit — and
laid them in a grave. The spot was
long after distinguished by the letters,
large and legible, deeply cut in the
turf, " T. P. M.," signifying " here
Thomas Parker was murdered." l

The hanging in chains of a man
named Corbet, of Tring, who mur-
dered Richard Holt in 1773, is note-
worthy, as the last instance of gibbeting
in the county of Buckingham.2

A notorious highwayman, John
Whitfield, was executed and gibbeted
on Barrock, near Wetheral, Cumber-
land, about the year 1777. It is said
that he was gibbeted alive, and that
the guard of a passing mail-coach put
him out of his misery by shooting him.

1 " History of Penrith," ut sup.

2 " Records of Buckinghamshire," paper by
the Rev. J. C. Wharton, vol. ii. p. 159,

82 HANGING IN CHAINS.

If this were true the guard was clearly
guilty of murder. We shall have
occasion to revert to this question.
Later, a sergeant was reduced to the
ranks for shooting at the dead body
in chains of Jerry Abershaw, a
notorious brigand, on Wimbledon
Common.1

In the year 1785 the Rev. Thomas
Kerrich made sketches of two men
hanging in chains upon one gibbet
on Brandon Sands, Suffolk. At the
present day all other record both of
the men (May and Tybald), their
crimes, and their punishment, has, like
the coral worm of the completed reef,
utterly passed away; all has succumbed
to " the tooth of time, and razure of
oblivion." The gibbet post is shown
bound with iron bands to prevent
cutting down.

1 "Notes and Queries," 1873, v°l- xi- PP- 83,
125. Fourth Series,

GIBBET ON BRANDON SANDS, 1785.

{From a sketch by the Rev. Thomas Kerrich.)

HANGING IN CHAINS. 83

About the middle of the last century
three men who robbed the north mail
near the Chevin, over against Belper,
were all executed and hung in chains
on one gibbet on the top of the moun-
tain. " Now then, you three, hang
there, and be a sign." I

It is recorded that a friendly hand
set fire one night to the gibbet which,
with all three bodies well saturated
with pitch, was burnt to ashes, leaving
only the irons and chains remaining.2
Not unduly to multiply instances we
may hurry on to 1788. In this year
the postboy between Warrington and
Northwich was robbed by William
Lewin. This was still a capital
offence, but the culprit evaded justice
for three years. Being finally over-

1 " The Pilgrim's Progress," chap, iv., Fate
of Simple, Sloth, and Presumption.

2 "The Antiquary," Nov., 1890.

84 HANGING IN CHAINS.

taken he was executed at Chester,
and his body hung in chains on the
highest point of Helsby Tor, eight
miles from Chester, and visible, as it
was said, " with glasses," even from
the Peak of Derbyshire. It was
evidently believed that the whole
country round would see and take
warning.1

"... but they kill'd him, they
KilPd him for robbing the mail,
They hanged him in chains for a show." 2

There were then three gibbets be-
tween Liverpool and Warrington.

But the system, like all violent
systems, was not deterrent — indeed, a
multitude of men hanging in chains
seems to affect the spectator rather as
a curious sight than as the necessary
and proper consequence of transgres-
sion.

1 C. Madeley, " Obsolete Punishments," p. 35.

2 "Rizpah," Tennyson.

MILES S IRONS, 1 79 1.

{From " Obsolete Pii7iiskments" by C. Madeley.)

HANGING IN CHAINS. 85

Five months after the death of the
last-mentioned criminal, Edward Miles
was executed and hung in chains, not
only for robbing the mail, but for
murdering the postboy also. It was
a serious case, and the man was hung,
and gibbeted in irons on the Man-
chester road, near the Twystes. These
irons, of a very careful manufacture,
were dug up on the spot in 1845, and
falling into the hands of the late Mr.
Beaumont, are now preserved in the
Warrington Museum.

In 1796 James Price and Thomas
Brown were hung in chains on one
gibbet at Trafford, between Chester
and Tarporley. A print in the ac-
count of the trial shows the carcasses
in iron frames shaped to the body like
the Warrington example.1

To take again a southern case. In

1 Communicated by Mr. C. Madeley.

86 HANGING IN CHAINS.

1799 two brothers named Drewett, for
attacking the Portsmouth mail, in the
delightful district of Midhurst, were
executed on Horsham Common, and
their bodies taken to the scene of the
robbery, and hung up in irons. This
event still lingers in memory in the
district, and the more so, perhaps,
because the younger of the two con-
victs is believed to have had the
nobility to suffer for his father, whose
guilt he would not disclose.1 The
" last dying speeches " of these two
men, printed with uncouth verbiage,
and picturesque deformity of language,
is still occasionally to be met with.

1 " Sussex Archaeological Collections," vol.
xxiii. pp. 214-5.

Chapter ix.

EW persons of taste have
failed to make themselves
acquainted with the works
of Bewick, the father of
English wood-engraving. In them we
have everything the most truthful and
poetical. Wide, wild moor, the deso-
lation of winter, with the solitary-
worn-out horse, forgotten in the snowy
waste ; the falling fane, the crumbling
tower ; scenes on northern shores, —
rocks and sea-fowl, wrecks and tern-

88 HANGING IN CHAINS.

pests.1 He delights to show us in his
famous tailpieces such pictures as the
ragged rapscallions that abound in
streets, graceless and cruel ; beggars
and strollers with bear, monkey, or
trumpet ; lame soldiers and wounded
men, real or sham ; the belated traveller
in the rain ; the snow-man of our
childhood ; the tipplers with their
delightful tall, twisted-stemmed wine-
glasses, all " regardless of their doom,"
or returning with faltering steps from
the tavern ; the man on the stepping-
stones, bowed down with his burden,
the poor mewing cat turning round
and round at sea in a tub. Among
his principal engravings Bewick gives
us in his " Quadruped," and with a
delicacy and force that no modern
workman has equalled, for instance,

1 See W. Howitt, " The Rural Life of Eng-
land," 1838, vol. ii.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 89

the lion rearing a majestic crest, and
" we seem to hear his awful voice, rol-
ling like thunder along the ground, and
cowing all nature into silence ; " l the
tiger with his fearful glittering eye,
that only Rubens or Riviere can paint.
Among birds we may recall the wood-
cuts of the moping thoughtful owl ;
the water ouzle, with his white waist-
coat, sacred to the rocks of the Dove ;
and the carrion crow wheeling round
the gibbet. All these are capital
examples of Bewick's skill ; they are,
indeed, as fine as they can be, and
rendered with the magic touch, with
that wonderful feeling for nature which
just make the difference between the
plodding draughtsman and the born
artist. Many persons can " draw," but
very few can draw even tolerably.
And Bewick chose, like Hogarth, to

1 See W. Howitt, ut. sup.

90 HANGING IN CHAINS.

portray humanity in some of its
degradations, and to call up our feelings
against violence and wickedness and
the abuse of man's high quality. He
shrank not from the gibbet, he saw its
educational value, and, with absolute
fidelity, he gives us many examples
of the time-honoured horror, standing
out stark and bare against the bleak
sky.

In a late year of the last century a
man was hung in chains in the north
of England, — but the particular place
we have not been able to identify.
And we lift the long-forgotton crime
up to notice now because it forms
the subject of a tailpiece by Bewick
to the Introduction to ''Carrion Birds."1
The print is here roughly reproduced
because it exhibits some particular
features. The head is tied up in a

1 " British Birds," v. p. 84.

GIBBET.

{From a woodcut by T. Bewick, " British Birds")

HANGING IN CHAINS. 91

white cloth, with a tender touch of
feeling, and the body fastened up in
irons with Doric simplicity ; the post
is stuck full of thousands of nails, like
the example near Carlisle, to pre-
vent men from coming and climbing
and stealing the body away — a pre-
cautionary measure recalling the sentry
of Roman times.1

1 In consequence of the rarity of representa-
tions of gibbets, it may be desirable to mention
other examples in the works of Thomas Bewick,
"British Birds," Edit. 1832, vol. i. In a tail-
piece to the account of the Alpine Vulture, p.
53, a gibbet is shown in the distance. Tailpiece
to the Introduction to the Shrike, p. 74 — a
moonlight scene, with a gibbet in the distance ;
in the foreground a scared old man is terrified
by trees and rocks whose forms assume hob-
goblin shapes. Tailpiece to the account of the
Chatterer, p. 105 — Satan sits upon a rock,
smoking a pipe, a gibbet in the distance. Tail-
piece to the account of the Whitethroat, p.
261 — a gibbet in the distance. " Quadrupeds,"
first Edit., 1790. Tailpiece to the account of

92 HANGING IN CHAINS.

the Arctic Fox, p. 274 — a gibbet in the dis-
tance ; in the foreground two boys hanging a
dog. Tailpiece to the account of the Opos-
sum, p. 375 — a gibbet in the distance; in the
foreground two boys belabouring a donkey.

Z&r

Chapter x.

[BOUT the year 1800 a man
named Watson was execu-
ted at Lynn for the murder
of his wife and child. The
body was taken to Bradenham Heath,
and there gibbeted in irons. Some
few years ago the gibbet was still
standing, and at the foot of it Mr. H.
Rider Haggard and his brother found,
imbedded in the sod, the upper por-
tion of the iron framing, including the
headpiece, with a portion of the skull
remaining in it. So it had been with-
drawn from sight by kindly nature, in

94 HANGING IN CHAINS.

her pitying mood, and covered by the
greensward. A lady of that neigh-
bourhood, who died a few years ago,
aged ninety-four, used to relate, that
when she was a girl, she once crossed
the gibbet common, and noticed that
a starling had built her nest in the
man's ribs ; later on some lovers of
nature came from Shipdam and stole
away the young birds. The remains
of Watson's irons are now deposited
in the Norwich Gaol, among a very
interesting collection of chains, gyves,
irons, gang-chains, and burning girths
for the " pale martyrs in their shirts
of fire."

A noteworthy feature in this case
was, as in that of John Whitfield,
before mentioned, that it got about, in
latter days, in the neighbourhood, that
the man had been hung up alive, and
watched till he died. Similarly, we
have a story from Durham, showing

HANGING IN CHAINS. 95

that one Andrew Mills, gibbeted alive
in 1684, for murdering his master's
three children, was kept in existence
for some time by his sweetheart (of
course), who, until she was prevented,
gave him milk in a sponge at the end
of a stick.1

These kind of stories usually fall
to pieces when they are examined,
and it so happens that on the tomb-
stone of the three unfortunate little
children, in Merrington churchyard, are
the words : — " He was executed and
afterwards hung in chains "; but " exe-
cuted and" have been nearly obliterated
by deep chisel marks,2 thus forming at
once both the post hoc and the propter
hoc of the story. As to the milk, and
the sweetheart, this part of the fable

1 "Notes and Queries," 1872, vol. x. p. 332.
Fourth Series.

2 Ibid., p. 459.

96 HANGING IN CHAINS.

is nothing but a free rendering —
necessary under the circumstances —
of the classical legends of Euphrasia
and Evander, of Xantippe and Cimo-
nos.1 Tradition often does, but just
as often — or oftener does not justify
itself.2

1 " There is a dungeon, in whose dim, drear
light
What do I gaze on ? . . .
An old man and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar.

Here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift ... It is her sire
To whom she renders back the debt of

blood . . .
Drink, drink and live, old man; heaven's
realm holds no such tide."

" Childe Harold," iv. st. 148.
2 There is a very circumstantial story of one
Ambrose Gwinnett, who, according to his own
statement, was hung, and hung in chains at
Deal in 1709, and came to life again, and
escaped to Florida. But, what is more extra-
ordinary still, he fell in with the very man he
was supposed to have murdered, survived him for

HANGING IN CHAINS. 97

This suggests a few words upon the
question of hanging alive in chains.
Hollingshed, in his " Description of
England " l says : — " In wilful murder
done upon pretended (premeditated)
malice, or in anie notable robbery,"
the criminal " is either hanged alive
in chains near the place where the
fact was committed, or else, upon
compassion taken, first strangled with
a rope, and so continueth till his bones
come to nothing." Chettle, in " Eng-
land's Mourning Garment," 2 speaking
of the clemency of Elizabeth, says : —
" Where-as before time there was ex-
traordinary torture, as hanging wilfull

many years, and long swept the way at Charing
Cross. The whole thing is in print, and many
people are apt to think that what is "in print "
must be true. See "The Life and Strange
Voyages and Uncommon Adventures of Am-
brose Gwinnett." London, 17 71.

1 Pp. 184-5. * C. 4 vers.

6

98 HANGING IN CHAINS.

murderers alive in chaines ; she having
compassion . . . said their death satis-
fied for death."

These, and many other similar
arbitrary statements, might seem con-
clusive evidence ; but, on the other
hand, the " Statutes at Large " may be
vainly searched to find one directing
the punishment of gibbeting alive.
And when we recall the calm language
in which persons are directed by sta-
tute to be boiled, disembowelled, or
burnt alive, we may be quite sure that,
if the English law had ever contem-
plated the infliction upon a subject
of such lingering torture as gibbeting
alive, it would have been as coldly
and legally set forth, and, by this time,
as legally repealed, — which is perhaps,
more to the point still. And, further,
it is difficult to believe that any
English official would, at any time, —
whether under the pressure of the

HANGING IN CHAINS. 99

hardening influences of religious in-
tolerance, or politics, — have taken upon
himself so serious a responsibility, or
that any section of the English people
would have suffered such wanton bar-
barity. The conclusion we are happily
driven to is that both Hollingshed,
Chettle, and all the old and modern
hare-brained irresponsible chatterers
have been carried away by a super-
stitious belief in a poor, vulgar fiction,
" a vain thing fondly imagined,"
and to which the multitude of to-day
still appear to cling with a fatuous de-
votion which, probably, no amount of
education or refutation will ever en-
tirely eradicate. This shows the
strong vitality of fiction.

With regard to the punishment of
hanging and boiling, alluded to above,
a single example will suffice. After
the suppression of the Northern Rising
the king attacked the Friars. Their

ioo HANGING IN CHAINS.

popularity and poverty alike had saved
them when the lesser monasteries fell ;
but their independence and boldness,
in preaching against the Marriage
question and the Supremacy, proved
their ruin. Those who had not fled
the country were treated with the
utmost harshness. Thus Father Stone,
an Austin Friar of Canterbury, for
obstinately maintaining his opinion
that the king may not be head of the
Church of England, was hung, cut
down, and his body boiled and quar-
tered, as appears from the following
very curious document preserved
among the records of the city of
Canterbury: — "a.d. 1538-9. Paid for
half a ton of timber to make a pair
of gallaces to hang Father Stone.
For a carpenter for making the same
gallows and the dray. For a labourer
who digged the holes. To four men
who helped to set up the gallows.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 101

For drink to them. For carriage of the
timber from stable gate to the dun-
geon.1 For a hurdle. For a load
of wood, and for a horse to draw
him to the dungeon. For two men
who set the kettle and parboiled him.
To two men who carried his quarters
to the gate and set them up. For a
halter to hang him. For two half-
penny halters. For Sandwich cord.
For straw. To the women that
scoured the kettle. To him that did
execution ." 2

An obliging correspondent tells us
that he remembers riding with his
father, in 1819, under a gibbet near
Evesham, and the creaking of the
irons as they were swayed by the
wind.

1 The hill called Dane John, near Canterbury.

2 Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Report., App. 158,
quoted in "Henry VIII. and the English Monas-
teries," p. 260, by F. A. Gasquet.

Chapter xi.

OWARDS the year 1808 a
man named Thomas Otter,
alias " Tom Temporal,"
was hung at Lincoln for
the murder of a woman with whom he
cohabited there. It appears that she
had followed him when returning into
Nottinghamshire where his wife lived.
At the junction of the two counties
he turned on her, like a wild beast,
and slew her — in a lane near Saxilby,
still called " Gibbet Lane " — and flung
the body into a drain dividing the two
counties. Not exactly knowing which

HANGING IN CHAINS. 103

way to go at the moment,1 the bewil-
dered miscreant fled back as quickly
as he could to Lincoln, was captured,
and nearly proved an alibi at the trial.
But he was convicted and executed,
and hung in chains on the fatal spot.
This custom had then, fortunately,
fallen somewhat into disuse ; but even
desuetude had its drawbacks, for
crowds came to see the spectacle, —
just as all Sheffield and Rotherham
flocked to the gibbet of that famous
highwayman, Spence Broughton, on
Attercliffe Common in 1792, and a
stall with that curious cloying refresh-
ment— gingerbread — was set up, after
the English rural fashion. Subse-
quently some inquiring tomtits were

1 "I saw also that he looked this way and
that way, as if he would run ; yet he stood still,
because (as I perceived) he could not tell
which way to go." (" The Pilgrim's Progress,"
chap, i.)

104 HANGING IN CHAINS.

attracted, and made their nest, and
hatched seven young ones, in the
upper part of the iron frame where
the head was fixed ; and a local poet,
in the fulness of his heart, produced
the following riddle : —

" 10 tongues in one head,
9 living and one dead,
I flew forth to fetch some bread,
To feed the living in the dead."

(Answer) " The tomtit that built in Tommy
Otter's head."

Years after, our informant,1 riding in
Gibbet Lane, came to the gibbet and
saw bones and rags of clothing lying
upon the ground, and the skull re-
maining in the iron headpiece. Parts
of these irons are now preserved at
Doddington Hall, near Lincoln.

Another courteous correspondent 2

1 Sir C. H. J. Anderson, Bt.

2 Dr. Donnet.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 105

informs us that nearly seventy years
ago, in Malta, on the occasion of a
public festival, the body of one of two
brothers, between whom a feud had
long existed, was found murdered.
Circumstantial evidence pointed so
strongly to the survivor as the assassin
that he was tried, condemned, and
executed. In accordance with the
Code Rohan, the right hand was
separated from the body, and gibbeted
in an iron cage. Some years had
passed by when a man dying in the
Civil Hospital confessed himself to be
the murderer ; he earnestly begged
that something might be done to
remove the stain from the memory of
the blameless brother, and presently
passed away. The gibbeted hand
was now lowered and followed to a
grave by an impulsive multitude in
sobs and tears, uttering prayers and
entreaties for the repose of the soul of

106 HANGING IN CHAINS.

the innocent victim, and trusting that
the ordeal of martyrdom through
which he had passed in this world
might prove to him a crown of glory
in the next.

The same correspondent vividly re-
calls the bodies of pirates hung in
chains on the walls of the fort of
Ricasoli, at the entrance to the har-
bour of the island of Malta, as seen
by him in 1822.

"A Lady Pioneer" describes an
ancient rusty cage, here illustrated,
seen hanging from a tree by a friend
in Eastern Bengal. This was said to
have been used as a punishment for
dacoits, the tradition being that they
were hung up alive.1 The shape and
careful manufacture almost seem to
bear this out. In the Asiatic Society's
Museum at Calcutta an iron apparatus

1 " The Indian Alps," by A Lady Pioneer,
P- 32-

IRON CAGE IN EASTERN BENGAL.

{From an engraving in " The Indian Alps")

HANGING IN CHAINS. 16?

for the same purpose is preserved.
Another exists in Jamaica, and to both
the same legend is attached.1

In the year 1827 a chimney-sweep
committed a murder on the high road
near Brigg, and was tried at Lincoln.
It so happened that the new Assize
Courts were then being erected, and
the Dean and Chapter lent their
majestic Chapter House for the trial.
This building was temporarily fitted
up as a criminal court, the trial took
place in it, and lasted all day, and in
the deepening gloom, under the shadow
of St. Hugh's great minster, Judge
Best sentenced the prisoner to death,
and ordered the body to be hung in
chains on the spot where the crime
was committed. It is well remembered,
by a gentleman who was present, what
a strange, solemn, and striking scene

1 " Notes and Queries," 1873, vol. x. p. 125.
Fourth Series.

108 HANGING IN CHAINS.

it was. The inhabitants of Brigg
petitioned against the gibbeting, on
account of the scene of the murder
being so very near the town, and this
horror was accordingly remitted.

In 1832, on the occasion of a pit-
men's strike at Shields, Mr. Nicholas
Fairies was the only resident magis-
trate, and, as such, had to take active
steps to preserve the peace. On June
nth he was riding to Jarrow Colliery
when he was attacked and pulled from
his horse by two men, and so ill-treated
that he died on the 21st. One of the
men escaped, the other, William Job-
ling, was taken, tried at Durham, and
hung on August 3rd. The body was
escorted by soldiers to Jarrow Slake,
stripped, covered with pitch, and re-
clothed. It was then carefully encased
in a framework of iron, — the^face being
wrapped in a white cloth, — and hung
on a gibbet twenty-one feet high and

HANGING IN CHAINS. 109

bound with iron bands. The post was
fixed into a stone of one and a half
tons' weight which was sunk into the
Slake about a hundred yards within
high-water mark, and nearly opposite
the spot where the murder was com-
mitted. Jobling's gibbet was covered
for about five feet up by the high tide.
During the dark night of August 31st
the body was stolen away, and is said
to have been buried in the south-west
corner of J arrow churchyard.

It is a curious coincidence that while
these pages have been passing through
the press Jobling's widow has died
(April 14, 1 891) at the great age of
ninety-six. Thus the last personal
link with the Gibbet has been severed.1

1 See " Proceedings, Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-on-Tyne," in. pp. 263, 308. Sykes's
" Local Records," ii. pp. 365, 388. — Information
from Mr. R. Blair.

i io HANGING IN CHAINS.

The last example of hanging in

chains : —

. " Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history," r

is that of a man named Cook, a book-
binder, who murdered Mr. Paas, with
the iron handle of his press,at Leicester,
in 1834. He was sentenced to death,
and the body ordered to be gibbeted.
This was done in Saffron Lane, out-
side the town, and the disgraceful
scene around the gibbet, as described
by an eye-witness, was like a fair. A
Dissenter mounted upon a barrel and
preached to the people, who only
ridiculed him, and the general rioting
soon led to an order for the removal
of the body.2 In the same year (4
William IV.) Hanging in Chains was

1 As You Like It, Act. ii. sc. 7.
3 " Notes and Queries," 1883, vol. viii. p. 394.
Sixth Series.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 1 1 1

abolished by statute. The irons
which proved so strong a magnet
are now preserved in Leicester Gaol.
Finally, an accomplished Northamp-
tonshire antiquary i informs us that
many years ago he came to a lone hill
at Elsdon, near Morpeth, in North-
umberland, and found a gibbet with a
wooden head hanging from it ; this
still exists. It seems that the murderer,
whose crime it recorded, William Win-
ter, who slew Margaret Crozier, in
1 791, sat down to his lunch in a
sheep-fold, and a curious shepherd-boy
abstractedly counted the nails in his
boots, and noticed his peculiar knife,
and this led to his apprehension. The
wooden head is a memorial of the
savage past, a relic of " the good old
times," which we may truly rejoice to
think have passed away for ever.

Sir H. E. L. Dryden, Bt.

112 HANGING IN CHAINS.

We have now dealt with some of
the changeless passions in what the
immortal Castaway calls " that strange
chequer-work of Providence, the life of
man." We have traversed the gory-
path of dishonour from end to end, at
times with wide steps, a way often
obscure, and ever slippery with blood.
It has not been necessary to go to
mendacious chroniclers, or scandalous
diaries, for this story of man's high
nature in some of its degradations, for
we have, verily, as in the " Visions of
Mirza," l essayed to cross the bridge
over the Vale of Misery ; we have
" unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed
the dead bodies." 2

It has been impossible to treat of
such a ghastly subject— of which the
horrors seem to burn themselves into

1 Spectator, No. 159, Sept. 1, 171 1.

2 King Henry IV., Part i. Act iv. sc. 2.

HANGING IN CHAINS. 113

the mind — without a certain amount
of ghastliness ; indeed, without the
plea of attempting to throw a ray of
light into some of these dark corners
of history, we should almost have
flinched from bringing forward these
melancholy topics, making sensibility
shudder, and which our readers may,
perchance, find it a pleasure to forget.
And in imagination we already hear
the cry —

" Vex not his ghost : O, let him pass ! he hates
him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer." 1

1 King Lear, Act v. sc. 3.

THE END.

H4

Note. — Any notice of Gibbets in England
would be incomplete without a reference to the
ifalifax Gibbet. This instrument of speedy but
rough justice resembles the Guillotine. It re-
mained in use until 1650, and records exist
showing how numerous were the sufferers under
its swift blade. The Earl of Morton, passing
through Halifax about the middle of the six-
teenth century, witnessed an execution, and is
said to have been so much pleased with it that
he had a similar machine made for Scotland,
where he was Regent. It long remained unused
under the name of "The Maiden." But on
June 3, 1587, the Regent was himself executed
by it. Thus, as we have it in Hudibras, he
" made a rod for his own breech." The Maiden
is now preserved in the Museum of the Society
of Antiquaries of Scotland, at Edinburgh. — See
"Halifax and its Gibbet Law," &c, 1756.

IU^DEX.

Ach^us, his end, 9.

Alfric, Archbishop, Vocabulary of, 13.

Amasa, fate of, 5.

Anastatius, Saint, martyrdom of, 12.

Anglo-Saxons, the; use of gallows with, 13.

Azariah, burial of, 1

Baker, the Chief, fate of, 4.

Bewick, his woodcuts, 87 ; his representations of

the gibbet, 89, 91.
Boiling and quartering, example of, 100.
Brunne, Robert, 14.

Chains — see Hanging in.
Chettle, on hanging alive in chains, 97.
Coligny, hung on gibbet of Montfaucon, 40.
Colman, Saint, martyrdom of, 12.
Constable, Sir Robert, 16.
Cross, the, the gibbet, 6, 9 ; the Christian
emblem, n.

n6 INDEX.

David, burial in city of, i.

Despencers, the, execution and quartering of,

19 ; burial of their remains, ib.
Douai, gibbet at, 51.
Dreghorn, Lord, on hanging in chains in

Scotland, 29.

Egyptians, the, their treatment of the bodies

of criminals, 4.
Etruscans, their gibbeting on a cross, 9.

Ferreolus, Saint, martyrdom of, 12.

Four dies Patibidaires, 31.

Furca (Gibbet), use of, with the Romans, 1 1 .

Galga (Gallows), use of, with the Anglo-
Saxons, 13.

Gallows and Gibbet, difference between, in
England, 25 ; in France, ib.

Gallows, the, in England, 14 ; in Scotland, 29,
30 ; in France, — -four dies patibulairesi — 3 r ;
their monumental character, 32 ; in Spain,
42; in Holland, 46; at Douai, 51.

Germans, the, punishments with, 26.

Gibbet of Montfaucon, description of, ^ ;
mode of operation, 35 ; ancient poetry
concerning it, 38 ; of Montigny, 39 ; in
England, 74 ; effect on travellers and
traffic, ib.; of Halifax, 114.

Gibbet riddle, 104.

Gibbeting of animals, in France, 40 ; in
Holland, 45.

Gloucester, Robert of, 14.

Gower, John, 16.

INDEX. 117

Halifax, gibbet of, 114.

Hand gibbeted in Malta, 105.

Hanging in chains: — At Easthampstead, 15;
at Hull, 16; at York, ib. ; in Jersey, 2 2 ;
in England, 1631 — the usual custom, 27;
in Scotland, 1637, 29; near Edinburgh, 1688,
30 ; noticed in the " Pilgrim's Progress,"
49 ; at Bourne, Cambridgeshire, 53 ; at
Hampstead, 54 ; near Rugby, ib. ; at
Cawood, near York, 55 ; near London, 58 ;
in the Orkneys, 61; by petition, 64; at
Rye, 66 ; at Carlisle, ib. ; at Rake, Sussex,
67 ; at Long Marston, Buckinghamshire,
69 ; first legally recognized, 70 ; terror
evoked at prospect of, 72; preparation of
the body for, 73; Thames Pirates, 75, 78;
in Epping Forest, ib. ; near Penrith, 80 ;
at Tring, 81 ; near Wetheral, Cumberland,
ib. ; on Brandon Sands, double gibbet,
82 ; near Belper, triple gibbet, 83 ; near
Chester, 84 ; near Warrington, 85 ; near
Chester, double gibbet, ib. ; near Mid-
hurst, 86 ; examples illustrated by Bewick,
90, 91; near East Dereham, 93; near
Durham, 95 ; at Deal, 96 ; near Lincoln,
103; near Sheffield, ib. ; in Malta, 106;
in Bengal, ib. ; at Calcutta, 107; in
Jamaica, ib. ; ordered near Brigg, but
remitted, 108; on Jarrow Slake, ib. ; near
Leicester, last example of, no; abolition
of, by Statute, ib. ; wooden head in
memoriam, near Morpeth, in.

Hanging alive in chains, fable of, 94; state-

n8 INDEX.

ments of Hollingshed and Chettle, 97 ;
the fiction examined, and set aside, 99.

Hector, his desire for burial, 8.

High Treason : — Punishment for, 1 6 ; descrip-
tion of, 18; Statute of 1351, ib. ; first
example of, 1241, ib. ; Wallace, ib. ; the
Despencers, 1 9 ; Hotspur, ib. ; executions
for "the — 45," 21 ; pardon of five gentle-
men for, 1447, 22; definition of, 63;
Jemmy Dawson, 79.

Hollingshed, on hanging alive in chains, 97.

Hotspur, execution and quartering of, 19; the
remains again brought together, ib.

Jehoiakim, denunciation of, 3.
Jeremiah, prophecy of, 3.
Jersey, hangings in chains in, 22.
Jews, the, treatment of their dead, 4.
Jotham, burial of, 1.
Justice, La, La Grande, 32.

Kerrich, Mr., his sketches, 82.

Leoninus, Albertus, on suicide with the

Romans, 10.
Lincoln, the Chapter House at, a criminal

court, 107.

Malta, a hand gibbeted, 105; pirates at, 106.

Marise, William, a pirate, 1241, 18.

Medecis, Catherine de, views Coligny on the

gibbet of Montfaucon, 40.
Mezentius, his desire for burial, 7.
Montfaucon, gibbet of, 33.

INDEX. 119

Montigny, gibbet of, 39.

Norfolk, Duke of, 16.
Northern Rising, 1536, 16.
Northampton, behaviour at, 76.

Our Saviour, gibbeted, 1 1 .

Peine forte et dure, 61, 62.

" Pilgrim's Progress," the, hangings in chains in,

49.
Piracy in the Orkneys, 60.
Pirates gibbeted, in Jersey, 22 ; on the Thames,

75, 78; in Malta, 106.
Preacher, the, on lack of burial, 4.

Quartering: — At Carlisle in 1536, 16; of a
pirate, in 124 1, 18 ; of Wallace, /£. ; the
Despencers, 19; Hotspur, ib.\ for "the
—45/' 21.

Rack, the, 62.

Rizpah, watches of, 5, 6.

Rhodez, Count of, his seizing of justice, 31.

Robbing the mail, 83, 85, 86.

Romans, the, their dread of exposure, 9 ; their

use of the furca, or gibbet, 1 1 ; their laws

as to gibbeting, 72.

Saints, gibbeted, 12.
Smugglers, gibbeted, 67.
Standing Mute, 61, 62.

i2o INDEX.

Statute of Westminster the First, 1277, 14; of
treason, of Edward III., 1351, 18; of
George II., 1752, 70, 72; of William IV.,
1834, no.

Tarquinius Priscus, orders gibbeting on a

cross, 9.
Thames Pirates, 75; chains of, ib.

Villon (Corbeuil), his poetry on the gibbet of

Montfaucon, 38.
Vincent, Saint, martyrdom of, 12.
Voltaire, his gallows at Ferney, 31.

Wallace, execution and quartering of, 18.
Weever. on punishment for treason, murder, &c,

2 7 ; on hanging in chains, ib.
Witchcraft, 68.
Women, punishment of, in England, 52 ; in

France, 53.

%

JNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CHILWORTK AND LONDON.